The #3 rarely makes money in most economies. But economies need them to keep #1 and #2 under checks. Yes, in the global telecommunication industry, you need a fairly strong #3 if you want to keep the price of telecom services to be optimal. In U.S., Verizon and AT&T ruled the domain but the old Sprint and TMobile were there, and can now become a combined stronger #3.

In Nigeria, there are fairly strong three players in MTN, Airtel and Glo. And even the presence of #4’s 9Mobile cannot be discounted. The implication is that price stays fairly optimal.

So, when you have strong two players and your laws are open and free, allowing market forces to run the system (in other words, you cannot rule by fiats and mandates), lack of a strong #3 will hurt.

That is what is happening in South Africa where data cost is out of order. Vodacom holds close to 43% of the market. MTN follows at 29% while Cell-C is at 17%. The implication is that Vodacom cares about MTN. See the distribution on click https://www.tekedia.com/cost-of-data-the-irony-in-south-africa/ In Nigeria, MTN has to track Airtel and Glo at the same time as both are largely strong #2 and #3.

Every market needs competition. Yes, it is a big irony that the most developed economy in Africa is the one that seems to have data cost which is out of order.

The Egypt data is not a typo.

As one of the largest economies in Africa, Lagos is a heart of the African continent, and most of our members in Tekedia Mini-MBA have activities therein. In our program, feedback does indicate that a tax paralysis is evident. So, to do something on it, we are introducing a course on Tax Law & Compliance in Lagos State.

We are honoured that Abimbola Abdur-Rahman Lekki, a Tax Attorney, and Head of Station in Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS), is developing a course on Tax Law & Compliance in Lagos State. My desire is that after this course, our members will understand Lagos and its tax systems, and together everyone will do his or her part to advance the economic center and the continent.

Of course, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) through one of its managers is also helping. But we are focusing on Global Tax Treaties and Benefits, primarily to educate and inform innovators and builders in Nigeria, Africa and globally, on how tax treaties could be used strategically.

Tekedia Institute is a modern school and we teach relevant things. Visit our new classroom: http://school.tekedia.com/

Thank you the Nigerian Society of Engineers. I am proud to serve the world as an engineer. It remains like yesterday when my mathematics teacher, Mr Bukar, in JSS3, asked “what would you like to be?” I said: “an electrical engineer; I like the electricity part of Integrated Science”. We build nations.

Tekedia Institute offers an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.

It is a sector- and firm-agnostic management program comprising videos, flash cases, challenge assignments, labs, written materials, webinars, etc by a global faculty coordinated by Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe. Your class will be in our new portal at school.tekedia.com

Edition 4 (Feb 8 – May 3, 2021)

Payment options for any part of the world and Africa available here. 

Tekedia Academic Programs

Access Bank Plc Nigeria is rumored to be in talks to acquire some assets of Atlas Mara which is exiting some markets in Africa. According to Bloomberg, Access plans to buy Atlas Mara properties in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. It would be interesting to see how that plays out. Why? Former Barclays boss who ran Atlas Mara evidently overpaid in some of these African businesses. So now he wants to sell, would Access get its usual bargain hunting deals, in which it typically pays largely nothing, for extremely vital properties like defunct Diamond Bank? 

And the big one: Access Bank wants to be in 22 African countries by 2025. It has a really long way to go. It is already the largest bank in Africa by customer base. But its market cap remains less than N300 billion even when GTBank Plc is hitting close to N1 trillion and Zenith Bank N740 billion.

Sure, there could be a strategy: have operations in most African countries for the emerging AfCTFA era, and using that, position the bank as the African bank. That is largely UBA’s playbook. Yet, UBA is worth just N280 billion which does imply that the spread has not unlocked leverageable factors for the bank.

Mr. Herbert Wigwe, Access boss, is a brilliant businessman; I wish him and the bank good luck. But he needs to calibrate if there are leverages on running banking operations in Zambia and Zimbabwe, going against battled-tested local players.